Roundtable on Concept and Predicate Commonality Across IndianLanguages
2025-12-04 - 2025-12-05
Day 1 began with Prof. Ashwin Kumar outlining CSIL’s researchvision, emphasising its interdisciplinary scope across language, logicand culture. Honorary Professor B. Narahari Rao followed with an immersivesession on the treating cultures as learnables. The session emphasized theneed to reconstruct concepts and predicates from Indian texts in order tomake them available for use and reflection. Prof. Nagaraj Paturi added ananthropological perspective, stressing the role of fieldwork in groundingconceptual inquiry.

The afternoon sessions bridged psychology,linguistics, and conceptual history. Prof. R.K. Mishra (Head, Centre forNeural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Hyderabad) discussed thehistoricity of concepts through a Hegelian frame, urging CSIL to initiateprojects that examine mental structures of Indian cultures through textualand empirical methods. Dr. Shankar Rajaraman (Director of the Centre forthe Study of Ancient History and Culture) illustrated how textual analysiscan illuminate aesthetic categories such as Bhava.

The day concludedwith a technical exploration of corpus linguistics. Prof. Niladri ShekarDash (Professor and Head of the Linguistics Research Unit at the IndianStatistical Institute) presented contemporary corpus-building and archivalmethods with illustrations from major national projects. Sri B.S.Suryaprakash (DAKSH, IIT Delhi) discussed the evolution and relativestability of legal concepts rooted in institutional reasoning and everydayparlance.

Together, the sessions showcased the methodological depth andcollaborative potential driving CSIL’s agenda on concept and predicatecommonality.

Day 2 Recap | Roundtable on Concept and PredicateCommonality Across Indian Languages

Day 2 turned the spotlight towardhumanities-led reflections on concept loss and the challenges of recoveringconceptual worlds from Indian traditions. The morning opened with Dr. VivekDhareshwar, who highlighted the persistent gulf between lived experienceand the explanations that contemporary theories and social-scientificstudies have produced about Indian culture. He urged the Centre toincorporate Kurkoti’s insights on pratyabhijñā (recognition) as a wayto deepen CSIL’s imagination and projects.

This was followed by Dr.Shashikala Srinivasan, who mapped how concepts within the Bhaktitraditions have been studied so far, while noting significant gaps andunexplored research questions—especially concerning how practitionersthemselves articulate intimacy, devotion, social roles, and divinerelations.

One of the major verticals explored by CSIL on Day 2 wasArchiving and Digital Technologies. Prof. Yoganandha C.S. shared hisextensive experience across national digitisation efforts, offeringpractical insights on archival processes, metadata standards, andlong-term preservation. Sri C.V. Venkatesh added the perspective ofSamskrita Bharati, discussing their large-scale digitisation workflows andgrassroots volunteer mobilisation. Their presentations triggered richreflections on the need to avoid duplication of efforts, to envision ameta-site for archiving, and to address challenges related to funding,workflows, and institutional vision.

The afternoon session began withSri Tanveer Hasan, who drew critical lessons from Wikisource digitisationand its applications. He clarified the conceptual distinction betweenarchiving and corpus creation, and emphasised institutional constraints,compliance obligations, and the indispensable role of communityparticipation and enthusiasm in sustaining such initiatives.

Prof. K.S.Kannan, Honorary Professor at CSIL, offered a thoughtful summary of theCentre’s scope and long-term vision, situating the diverse discussionswithin a unified intellectual framework.

The event culminated in aRoundtable that sparked collaborative synergies, seeded new researchdirections, and opened pathways for sustained dialogue and collectiveinquiry.
